In May this year, Infosys became the first Indian company to join the RE100, a global platform for companies committed to 100 per cent renewable power.Priyanka Sangani | ET Bureau | December 08, 2015, 16:48 IST

PUNE: Infosys has spent only Rs 20 crore of its proposed Rs 400 crore ($65 million) investment announced towards carbon-offset projects, announced in May this year. This is towards meeting a key sustainability goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2018. Ramadas Kamath, Executive Vice President and Head – Infrastructure and Sustainability, Infosys, said that the company remained on track to meet that goal, although this was a tough task.

"We need to offset about two lakh tonnes of carbon emissions, and this a very challenging target. The number of UN ratified projects available to offset the emissions are relatively few, which is why it is moving slowly," he said. So, while the company has working on distributing emission free stoves and setting up biogas plants in villages and taking up afforestation projects, the scale is still small.

In May this year, Infosys became the first Indian company to join the RE100, a global platform for companies committed to 100 per cent renewable power. It is also the first Indian tech company to declare a goal of being carbon neutral by 2018 at the United Nations. The company intends to reduce its power consumption to 50 per cent of what it was in 2008, and had already brought it down to 46 per cent last year.

"Even though the number of employees has increased by 120 per cent in that time period, the actual power consumption has gone up by only 13 per cent," said Kamath. Infosys also intends to generate 100 per cent of its power requirements through renewable sources, for which it would need about 175Mw of solar installations. Of this, it is scheduled to commission about 15Mw by FY16. In the first quarter of this fiscal, Infosys reduced its per capital consumption of electricity by 46 per cent and 30 per cent of the company’s needs are being met through renewable sources which should go up to 40 per cent this year.

One challenge here is the lack of a central policy on renewable energy. "Each state has its own guidelines and norms on renewable power. We are in constant consultation with the states and centre on how we can do more here," said Kamath. So while the offices in Karnataka use 75 per cent renewable power, in Pune, it is at only 8 per cent.

The company has among the highest number of LEED Platinum rated buildings in India (14) and four with the Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) 5 star rating. It also intends to bring down water consumption by 50 per cent, or from the current average of 53 litres per person to about 35 litres.

The company has a zero waste to landfill rate in its Bengaluru campus, and has almost achieved that goal at most other campuses. What will remain challenging however, is to constantly innovate to maintain these goals even as the company expands rapidly. Infosys has announced three new offices in Bengaluru which would house about 25,000 employees, in addition to new facilities in Nagpur, Mohali, Noida, Indore and Belgaum, all of which would be operational over the next 15-18 months.

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